The present invention relates to techniques for importing content package files into a network portal, and more particularly, to techniques for importing a compressed content package file and its related content files into a network portal.
A content package file is a relational data structure that contains one or more references to content files. These content files are referred to as the first level content files. Any of the first level content files can contain one or more references to second level content files. Any of the second level content files can contain references to third level content files, and so on.
The content files reside in the same directory as the content package file or in subdirectories of the package content file directory. The directory that the content package file resides in is referred to as the base directory, and the references specified in the content package file and in any of the other content files are relative to the base directory. The base directory is typically related to the machine that the files are stored in. A content package file is written in the computer programming language Extensible Markup Language (XML).
Client-server systems can import content package files over a network to a portal server computer. The content package file is sent to a portal server along with the base directory.
When a content package file is imported, content files that are referred to in the content package file are also imported and stored on the portal server computer. The portal server concatenates the content file references to the base directory to get a path or a universal resource locator (URL). The portal server then fetches the content files from this path or URL.
The portal server establishes a separate communication with a client machine to retrieve each of the content files that are referred to within the content package file and within the content files. If numerous content files are referenced, the portal server establishes numerous communications and perform numerous file transfers to retrieve each of the content files. This process can take a significant amount of time. Also, a significant amount of overhead bytes are needed to establish each communication between a server and a client machine.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide techniques for importing content packages through a network portal that do not require the portal server to establish multiple communications with a client machine to separately transfer each content file.
In prior art systems, the directories of the content files are shared and are in the same domain, so that a portal server can recognize the directories on the client machine. A user has to enter the client machine name before he can browse through content files so that the server portal can locate the correct directory.
A problem with this technique is that it does not provide the user with an intuitive approach to locating content files on the client machine. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a more intuitive approach for locating the content files on the client machine.
In prior art systems, the content files had to be granted read permission in order for the portal server to be able to read and fetch the content files. It would therefore be desirable to provide a more secure and less restrictive way for content files to be transferred to a portal server.